Break Every String -- Poetry by Joshua Michael Stewart

In his new book, Break Every String, Joshua Michael Stewart rides shotgun on a trip through the back roads of a small town called Everywhere.  Imagine him sitting there, unfolding an old, worn map of the region—so old that it feels like chamois—and featuring all the tired places encompassed there.  He may point to a lake, a school, abandoned wells, and homes stuffed with stories.  In his own measured pace, he’ll tell you about those places and why their significance goes far beyond the map could ever show.  This isn’t topography or simple street intersections, this map is a history of a person, a family, and pain.

Stewart doesn’t overshare. He’s subtle with his explanations, and doesn’t quite tell you the whole story. He leaves you with more questions than answers.  But the search, the listening, is the treasure of these poems. Epic stories are told, spanning several poems. And then there are simple phrases, stunning in what they reveal.

A blackbird in crosshairs, singing.

For example, the women of this town, this history.  They are tender, murderous, hateful, or simply invisible.  A brother is alluded to many times, Frank, and his story is told in broken shards that perfectly represents his jagged life.  Frank fights addiction, a broken family, a stint in jail—all working as parallels with the life of the man Stewart describes.  It’s not necessarily autobiographical, but rather a complex amalgamation of character studies.  You never quite know the whole story.

A large part of Stewart’s poems feature letters from mother to son, keeping him posted about the “other” brother. The inference is clear: the other son occupies her thoughts; the broken bird getting more attention than the one in flight with wings aloft.  The pain this inflicts is never mentioned only surmised.  And one that finds our narrator at a loss with his own worth.

            You haven’t had the blues

            Until your mother drunk-dials

            Your number at two o’clock

            In the afternoon and leaves

            A message for your brother

            Who’s been dead since 2007.

Coltrane and Brubeck serve as tonics in this town that maybe should be called Nowhere.  A place where Stewart asks, “What’s the narrative in a still life or a landscape?”

Some moments are universal but no less profound:

            When someone leaves

            Your life, you’re left with a story

            You’ll fetch from your minds library

            When sleep eludes you and you sit

            In the quiet of the kitchen, surrounded

            By the dark and empty rooms of self.

And at times, the contemplation takes a troubled, introspective turn:

            I’m not interested in last words,

            But in final thoughts. Do you love

            The most the one you think of last?

The most intense poem of the collection hits me hard each time I read it. I actually have it pinned to a wall.  I Wanted to Be a Blue Jay or Wear a Flowered Apron tears me up.  It’s almost the perfect poem, except that I don’t want to accept that the perfect poem has already been written. Much like Ginsberg’s Supermarket in California, it has so much dimension and depth that one could get lost in all the allusions and meanings, as well as get smacked by the simple reality of the words.  Take it straight or read something into it: in either case, it’s brilliant.

poet Joshua Michael Stewart

In it, the unknown narrator reflects on a previous suicide attempt, many years before.  He finds himself in the woods near his home,

            Blue jays flew in and out of the pines.

            I delighted at their squawking—thought of tenement 

            women

            Airing laundry on fire escapes. 

            I wanted to climb the branches for the same reason.

But then, he remembers his father, the things that the flawed man did for the flawed son that were absolutely perfect.  And he waits to be found by that same man. One who he now shares a meal with, realizing what it must have been like for his father to set out the long-ago morning, looking for a son and not knowing what he would find.

            …he takes us back

            To that morning behind the shed, looking at me

            As if I’m a jig-saw puzzle and he’s lost the picture.

            I didn’t take into account that he’d blame himself,

            That, with or without death, guilt would haunt him.

            …nothing rests between us except for our folded 

            hands.

Stewart’s poems reference jazz as a poultice to old-fashioned heartbreak.  Springsteen gets a nod as does many cultural references unique to rural places that time has left behind. Is it Everywhere? Is it Nowhere? That part of the map is rubbed out.  No matter, the reality is it's Anytown.

Special thanks to Hedgerow Books for the Review Copy.

As I Said by Lev Loseff (bilingual Russian edition)

This bilingual collection of the poems of Lev Loseff begins with a preemptory acknowledgement, by series editor Jean Boase-Beier, of the difficulties of translating poetry, especially when a reader has no knowledge of the original language and thus might miss subtleties that the poet intended. As Boase-Beier puts it:

We know that translated poetry is neither English poetry that has mysteriously arisen from a hidden foreign source, nor is it foreign poetry that has silently rewritten itself in English. We are more aware that translation lies at the heart of all our cultural exchange; without it, we must remain artistically and intellectually insular.

With this in mind, both Russian and English versions are here provided “side-by-side because translations do not displace the originals; they shed new light on them and are in turn themselves illuminated by the presence of their source poems.” And translator G. S. Smith shows a similar attention to detail and attitude that goes beyond mere words: Smith was actually able to translate much of Loseff’s personality in the poems, as the two collaborated over the translations over a period of several years and Loseff gave his approval to the resulting works. Loseff, an editor himself who has translated Joseph Brodsky, guided Smith in some areas with comments and suggestions, but his firmest request was that the poems be presented in reverse chronological order. It was Smith who chose the poems for the collection, selecting those that had the best prospects for accurate translation.

Yet another scholar, Barry P. Scherr, contributes an introduction to Loseff that gives some essential biographical information, making the poems that much more compelling. Loseff was part of what was casually called the “philological school” of Russian poets; intensely familiar with and influenced by traditional Russian literature, he refers to his country’s most famous writers (e.g. Pasternak, Dostoevsky, and Pushkin) in many of his own poems. Besides this cultural expertise, Scherr notes that Loseff is also a poet of observation, one whose emotion “arises from contemplating the world outside the poet, rather than the writer’s most intimate thoughts.” Yet Loseff does reveal himself on his terms, subtly, and G.E. Smith picks up on such nuances.

“At the Clinic” for example, will strike many readers viscerally (here’s the full poem):

The doctor mumbled things about my kidneys,
and looked away. I pitied this MD.
For life to me had burst its inhibitions,
and now flowed heatedly and easily.

Diploma on the wall. MD. His awkward silence.
Hand scribbling out a slanting recipe.
While I'm astonished by this easy lightness—
so easy had the news turned out to be!

What happened to the demons that beset me?
I'm breathing easily, not like before.
I'll go and let them have some blood for testing,
and give a bit more blood to sign this poem.

A great deal is revealed in the poetic subtext: “Burst” and the phrase “flowed heatedly” contrast with the idea of ease. In fact, Loseff uses variances of “easy” four times in the poem’s three stanzas. At the conclusion, there’s a play on words in regard to blood—using both “give” and “let”—that indicates a sense of surrender despite the lightness he’s just described. Curiously, Loseff initially speaks of the “doctor” delivering the news, only to repeatedly call him “MD” afterwards. The usage on the facing page in Russian also uses a different word for doctor after the first, which made me curious if there was an aural play on words here, as “MD” in English sounds like “empty.” Does the Russian word Loseff used, Врач, also hint at another meaning?

A poem that reaches into Russian literary history is “The Blood Washed Off. The Axe Dumped in the River,” which seems to make a clear reference to Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. While Raskolnikov stashed the axe rather than dumping it in the Neva, Loseff contrasts this murderer’s obsession over guilt (felt even before the murder occurred) and cleanliness with contemporary criminals, who “abandon axe and empty bottles by the body, mumble / when questioned, not bother washing off the blood.”

Throughout the collection, Smith’s translation beautifully captures a duality to the meanings. A phrase like “the river’s molten-honey seethe” in a poem about the death of a commercial area easily reminds the reader of the river Lethe and the feeling of forgetfulness. The layers are uncovered by Smith but never fully revealed—keeping Loseff an enigmatic poet whose work is destined for further study.

Published by ARC Publications.

First published in Rain Taxi magazine, 2013

www.raintaxi.com

2015 Maritime Reading Challenge

2015 Maritime Reading Challenge

Andrew Wyeth

It's been ages since I've suggested a Reading Challenge, and this one is a bit personal.  First, I adore Andrew Wyeth art and have been slowing collecting a few pieces (reproductions, of course).  My favorites are his ocean and ship images(even decrepit ones like above). Actually, ESPECIALLY the old and decrepit ones.  

At the same time, I recently saw a PBS Special on Sting's new production on Broadway, The Last Ship.  I bought the soundtrack. I am a bit obsessed (of course, hearing an eight-year-old sing sea shanty songs from the backseat is fun too!).  About this same time I was reading Brian Doyle's novel The Plover that just knocked me out: top 5 of my forever book list easily.  

Lastly, I've been spending more time than usual at my local favorite gorgeous beach and there is something so mysterious and visceral about the waves and rocks that I have the ocean on my brain. This reminds me of advice from a sage poet when I shared a ocean poem with him: he basically said, don't bother, it's all been said, as everyone feels this way about the sea. So let's see what's been said before! Can any author or poet describe the atmosphere of the sea that matches our own?

As a kid, I was lucky. We camped by the ocean each summer.  I confess that for far too long, I used to see the distant ocean oil-rigs lit up at night beyond the Channel Islands and thought that they were drive-in theaters on Hawaii.  Yep, smart kid.  It was at this beach, Refugio, west of Santa Barbara, that I first read Island of the Blue Dolphins, a true-story from Scott O'Dell that is a childhood classic now and that has set me (and a gazillion other kids)on a course for saltwater romanticism.

In my obsession with Andrew Wyeth I discovered his father had illustrated and edited Sea Story Collections.  Incidentally, the entire Wyeth family apparently are outrageously gifted artists.  Sadly, my family just creates long-term grudges!

So, it's still January, it's early, so it still counts!  Jump in!  Instructions below:  ***

2015 Maritime Reading Challenge

Any titles related to the sea or ships (both commercial and military), in any time period, in any region.  Nonfiction is fine, poetry is great, fiction is better! Classics like Robinson Crusoe, Moby Dick, The Old Man and the Sea, etc are obvious choices.  We, the Drowned by Carsten Jensen is a recent title that is amazing, related to Danish seafaring. The Lighthouse Road by Peter Geye is another such title focused on Lake Superior.  Another surprise is the book Longitude: by Dave Sobel, a nonfiction look at how men figured out how to navigate by longitude and not just latitude.

The Pilothouse Chart company lists these titles (some are mentioned above)in their top 10 of nautical fiction:  (www.pilothousecharts.com/nautical.htm)

• Grey Seas Under by Farley Mowat
• Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad (I could not get through this book....)
• Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brien
• Spartina by John Casey
• The Sea Wolf by Jack London
• The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers
• Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling
• The Wreck of the Mary Deare by Hammond Innes (out of print but still possible to find)

Entirely imaginary titles for completing parts of the Challenge:

• Captain: read five books and list them on this Challenge entry page (see tab above for link)
• First mate: four books
• Navigator:  three books
• Cabin boy: two books, and the knowledge that "In cases of shipwreck or starvation from prolonged be-calming, they are the first to be eaten by higher-ranking crewmates. (International Fellowship of Royal Privateers website)

***Any mention of the ghastly "Pirates of the ..." movie series constitutes an immediate expulsion from the Challenge for obvious reasons.  But, please feel welcome to mention a film or series or even exhibition related to the maritime world and maybe someone else can enjoy it too.

Sign in with name, means of contact, location by country, and goal in the comments section below.

Rendition, poetry by Manolis

“yet something lurks in the diaphaneity of glass”----from "Mirror"

Glass is not necessarily clear, just as a mirror doesn’t always reflect reality. In Rendition, the poet Manolis reveals layers of meaning that appear as elusive as a shadow on a broken shard of glass. Quotes from Federico Garcia Lorca and T.S. Eliot preface the segments of the book, and there is a sense of warning given throughout to the reader to focus on the present instead of being immersed in the past or in rehearsal for the future. As always, the language is picturesque, and Manolis describes inner thoughts and outer dialogue in a way that shows the battle between the two, especially in “Tolling Bell”, where grief is disturbed by the necessity of trivial funeral preparations.

Biblical allusions abound in this collection: most memorably in “Unexplainable,”

Two sparrows
endearing forms

Hop to mess of potato chips
you threw…


The endless is not more
secret than the finite

It takes two sparrows
and a potato chip

His words recall the verses in Matthew 10 where Jesus mentions two sparrows of small value, and then relays that ‘you are worth more than many sparrows’. Just as the seemingly worthless potato chips sustain the birds, the poet reminds the reader of nourishment for the soul.

In "Elegy II", the poem relives the last moments of a soldier’s life, as his memories flash before his eyes. He remembers old loves, an old song, and even senses the grief of his mother. The enjambment is placed in a way that tumbles the reader forward to the inevitable moment of death.

Two poems were especially fascinating in how they portray one event : in “Climb” the narrator is admiring a ladybug that has landed on his palm:

My eyes fix on her glamour
grand presence in minute scale

He seems a nice enough guy, yet in “Fourth Paradox”, it is figure of death, a “repugnant soulless killer”, that looks upon the ladybug he is holding:

He senses ladybug laughing…


He stares at the game of the red
black ladybug whose brilliance
just laughs in serenity …

Just who is who?  What has changed?  This disparity makes the reader wonder exactly who is in control…does death realize its powerlessness over nature? 

This collection is one that requires some meditation to best enjoy.  The glimpses of human nature throughout combine to create a pensive mood,  one that enables you to consider such phrases as found in "Chrysalis":  "What in the image of absence is revealed?"
 

Special thanks to Manolis for this Review Copy. 

Published by Libros Libertad of Surrey, BC.

The New Make Believe - Denise Newman, poetry

Denise Newman is both a poet and a translator. This grasp of the variances of language, and meanings, puts her in an especially appropriate position to play with words. In The New Make Believe, she does just that: changes one word in a line and changes the direction of the poem. Or she’ll substitute one word to create an entirely new pictorial image. In other words, she defies what you begin to suspect as you read. This is not in any way ‘ordinary’ poetry (if there is such a thing). It’s almost as if she’s teasing you to reconsider what happens when a train of thought is interrupted, derailed, reversed, or placed on a siding.


One of my favorite verses is in “Wolf”:

One more time
Get up off your stumbling
Blocks and stumble
One more time
Onward, humbled

In the same poem she observes the habits of thought, “the mind observes around and back, around and back in its grooves.” She’s not telling the reader to stay in that rut, and she’s not telling them everything will get better, but instead to just keep going, even if it means falling again.  In fact, the reference to blocks made me picture a stumbling toddler.

She also observes the value of self and space. In “Please Hold” she links the idea of communication and comes up with the best reason ever to not answer the phone: “when the phone rings-don’t answer-don’t flow in another’s stream, not yet”. No wonder it’s impossible to have a quiet moment to think, ponder, or ‘make believe’ if you’re allowing someone else to snap you out of your space.

The collection is divided into four subjects with four different subtle themes. I have to admit I don’t understand all of them, but I think that she intended to leave an interpretation open to what the reader fills into the empty space.  Thus, the reader is allowed to create their own 'make believe'.

Special thanks to Lindsey of the Post-Apollo Press for the Review Copy.

Blue Has No South, Alex Epstein

Translated from Hebrew by Becka Mara McKay

I can't decide if these are short stories, lyric essays, or poems.  In any case, Epstein has compiled little moments of mystery and romance, history and humor, into this slim volume from Clockroot Books.  There are no dramatic flares, and no heartbreaking losses.  Instead, the situations and events he describes in these short pieces are simple, personal, and honest.  There is emotion, but the quiet kind endured by quiet people, an emotion that reads far more realistic than some authors can describe effectively.

In "Memory Card":

"In the winter they buy a digital camera as a surprise for the grandchildren, but they don't know how to connect it to the computer they bought the year before....the old couple takes pictures of each other.  In March the woman dies in her sleep.  Her husband finds the instruction manual that came with the camera and reads about pixels, about digital zoom, and jpeg and avi files, and other strange, miraculous concepts.  In May he finishes the instruction manual, and removes from the camera the 1-gigabyte memory card.  He places it in his deceased wife's jewelry box and closes the lid."  The picture he has created in so few words reveals the enthusiasm of this couple to share with their grandchildren, the shock of death, and the quiet picture of a man diligently trying to figure out how to save her face.  That he doesn't wish to share this "memory card" illuminates how deep his feelings are.  I could easily picture him in a chair, trying to decipher the jargon and afraid of messing something up and losing the photos forever.  Epstein puts all that into a deceptively simple little paragraph.

In "Another Way Out", he tells another picturesque story.
"A king once imprisoned a poet in a cellar and demanded he find the most beautiful word in the world.  This legend has infinite endings.  In one, the poet dreamed he carved the word on the cellar's ceiling. When he awoke, he didn't remember it-only that it was written in the font now called FrankRuehl.*  In another, the poet doesn't discover (even in a dream) a hint of the word.  All he manages, completely by accident, is to invent the game of chess."  It has a fairy tale quality, dungeon and all, but the revelation of finding the most complicated game, the game of kings, in a search for beauty, is somehow exactly right.

Alex Epstein breathes life into a variety of topics in this collection:  cosmonauts, lost cell phones, dreams, and an escaped elephant heading to another zoo in search of lost love.  They are quirky and youthful but lack the sarcasm and edginess that sometimes settles into modern verse.

Special thanks to Hilary Plum of Clockroot Books for the Advance Reading Copy.

*FrankRuehl font is the ubiquitous Hebrew font style. There are many fonts that belong to this style, and all are based on an early 20th-century design by Raphael Frank.   Interesting to note that this font, as well as the popular Arial font, are both representative of Hebrew origins in printing.
(From http://www.microsoft.com/typography/fonts/family.aspx?FID=237)

Saturday Poetry: Aquarius Rising, Ben Fama

This is a lovely chapbook by a sweet-talking boy, one who thinks too much and too deep for his age.  Or maybe he's just acquired a different sort of wisdom still mixed with playfulness and awe.  I have no idea how old he actually is, but the spontaneity of the poems and some of the images make me think he's in his mid 20's, tops.  A phrase like "I come bearing .gifs" is a techie twist on an old phrase.  Images of waves, bullfighters and sequins contrast with the deeper and sometimes darker message underneath.

"Angel Youth",
Later in my sleep
I say aloud:  take my word on it
this beautiful shipwreck
can never become real
but wake me up
and tell me I'm wrong" 

In "Tauromachy" he creates a list of comparisons and conditions but adds visual details to keep them from sounding like dull axioms, and the effect is of a roguish observer, too young to yet be jaded:

"happiness exists only if it can
be spread across a grouping of days

sometimes the world at midnight seems empty
like an empty room in a sad empty gallery...

this world thrives on misunderstanding
a cloud full of moods for mature situations...

some mornings westerlies prevail in my sleep
the open radio glaring I had too much to dream last night"

It's almost as if he's describing life according to a weather report, with the unpredictable nature and variety implicit.  Similar expressions throughout make this lyrical chapbook a collection more light at heart than much of what I've read, but still provocative;  it's clever without being cute.

Special thanks to Ugly Duckling Presse for this review copy.

Where I Stay, Andrew Zornoza

This is an cryptic collection of random thoughts, experiences, and photographs of the author's fictional journey through the Western US and Mexico.  This definitely isn't the scenic route:  Zornoza's travels take him to the edge of urban life, mainly concentrating on the rough roads and deserted highways that have been left in the past by time and progress.  The landscape is grey, gritty, and jagged:  much like the words he chooses to describe his interactions and his reactions to it all.

His observations are sometimes funny, sometimes tense, and often a bit obscure.  You get the impression that he has x-ray vision and sees beneath the surface of the locations, as well as the hardened exteriors of the people he meets.  He encounters the most diverse group of people imaginable, all lingering on the outskirts of city and suburban life, some intentionally and some without choice.  The black and white photographs heighten the sense of distance and reminded me of a Dust Bowl migration.  There's sadness within it all, yet the traveller continues.  Much like an epic quest, he keeps pursuing that which he cannot identify.

"There are cracks in the country-in its families and highways, houses and rivers, factories, cellar windows, truck stops, in the sounds of chattering televisions, in the plexiglass booths of pay phones by bus stations, in the crushed glass of parking lots..."

"The prairie was my cellar door.  I had removed everyone I knew or the people had removed themselves.  I replaced them all with a vast plateau, then mountains, dry desert, broken pieces of landscape that didn't quite fit together.  I found people in the cracks."

Zornoza's gift in this collection is the little surprises he throws out amid the descriptions of the raw landcape.  In his diary-like entries, he may explain what happened and where, but he may also throw out a mysterious phrase: "because if someone was making a movie of her, the movie would not be good.  She was a bad actress, but there was no movie, there was no acting."  I really enjoyed the photographs but more the pictures his words composed.  Sparse, with no unnecessary details or dialogue.  An excellent collection....It reminded me somewhat of Sam Shepherd's Day Out of Days.

Special thanks to Tarpaulin Sky Press for the Review Copy.

www.tarpaulinsky.com

I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold, Charles Demuth

The Great Figure

I saw the figure 5
In gold
On a red
Firetruck
Moving
Tense
Unheeded
To going clangs
Siren howls
And wheels rumbling
Through the dark city.

William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)

Sour Grapes: A Book of Poems
Four Seas Company, Boston, 1921

The Russian Version, Elena Fanailova, Best Translated Book, poetry

The Russian Version was recently awarded the prize for 2010 Best Translated Book Award for Poetry by Three Percent (University of Rochester), an international literary translation site (link on left sidebar). 

In most instances I avoid prologues and forewords...they usually tell me too much about the work and influence me to look at it in a often slanted light.  I tend to read more into it of another's opinion than my own reactions.  However, in this beautiful poetry collection (beautiful as in subtle and elegant), I must break from tradition and read the Introduction by Aleksandr Skidan.  It's worthwhile in that he explains some biographical details about Fanailova and also about the style of poetry that is contained herein.  It's not simply free verse or heteromorphic but a compiling of various clues from her consciousness:  random bits of pop culture, socio-political commentary, painful details of war, conflicted thoughts of family and a tiny bit of ironic humor.  It is probably the most complicated political poetry I've read, in that it isn't just commenting on Chechnya or Afghanistan but more on the Russian character as a whole:  both the stereotype and the reality.  One of her poems mentioned Gogol, and having confused him with Pushkin and Chekhov I have to look him up, so I googled Gogol (!) and the first sentence I saw was that he "says something very essential about the Russian character";  in this she seems to dispute what typifies the Russian persona.

Additionally, another key factor to most enjoy these selections is to go to the back and read her text notes on each section (and these are excerpts, portions of other books and works).  These illuminate details that may be foreign to many Western readers.  For example, in "Freud and Korczak", she explains that the Korczak was a Polish pediatrician who remained with his young Jewish patients in the Warsaw ghetto, though it cost him his life.  The poem talks about the meaningless of murder, the irony of how insignificant a single murder can seem, and yet how a magnificent tool, capable of so much fine workmanship, ends up being a tool of destruction on a massive scale.  It concludes with the question "Why War?", which Fanailova remarks is the name given to letters exchanged between Einstein and Freud, which leads to further meditation on how perplexed those great minds were by the same things that confuse us now.

One of the most revealing selections is her explanation for her one of the poems "Again they're off for their Afghanistan", where she describes a chance meeting with the couple that it is based upon, and how "the whole course and mechanism of this conversation call for a kind of opening of a window in time, and through this window the draft of the eighties begins to blow.  The details, taste, and feel of the time all had to be captured, whenever possible, without distortion....The sense of violence is the main thing that I remember about this era; this sense permeated all entertainments, pleasures, sensations and feelings, not to speak of work...They speak about monstrous things in a rather ordinary way, even with some animation, because it is their youth they are referring to."  Given that my grasp of the eighties was big hair and Duran Duran, I feel shamed for my ignorance. 

A favorite passage:
Recall:  how fine it is to embrace your beloved
Shirking all responsibility.
Love will change with age,
Become even more magnificent,
Maybe more tender, or perhaps more combustible.
Try to stick around long enough for this.

These aren't easy or pretty;  they require some meditation and perhaps further research.  This selection is not for the masses but for those willing to journey somewhere outside their realm of comfort, and who would undoubtedly return richer for the experience.  I'm not going to pretend I understand every reference, or even every poem.  Some made me laugh in places I wasn't sure was appropriate ("Black Suits").  I hope to enjoy this collection and get more out of it as I return to it.

Special thanks to Ugly Duckling Presse for the Advanced Review Copy.

The Alchemist's Kitchen, Susan Rich (poetry)

The Alchemist's Kitchen, by Susan Rich, published by White Pine Press (http://www.whitepine.org/).

To say that this compilation is a lovely and simple collection would be false.  "Simple" could be taken to mean childlike, or unsophisticated, which it most certainly isn't.  By simple I mean that the poetry is understandable and personal, not so cluttered and overly nuanced that it becomes incapable of eliciting emotion.

Emotion abounds in this collection, which is divided into three parts:  Incantation, Transformation and Song.  Each section has its own beauty, and there is a delicate feel that at times becomes jagged and pointed, enough to make you sit up and re-read the stanza.  This is not a poetry book to sit back and feel relaxed by, but rather one to slowly meditate upon.

The people drawn within it are complicated:  in one moment trying to determine if a noise is simply thunder or an airstrike, while choosing what breakfast cereal to eat.  They carefully choose a lipstick for a dance that may be their last.  They discuss their travels with a dying parent whose only journey is from hospital bed to bath.  They are painful and yet some are light and airy.

One of my favorites:  from Song,
"You Might Consider"

how my long life of losing men
could create a new international sport.

Men lost in the desert, men missing
in action from doorways and all night diners;

men making the most of fire
escapes, service stairs, the emergency aisle

of airplanes like United.  Men
para-sailing after spaceship encounters.

I am accomplished in the world
of the see-you-later save

as his pick up truck disappears
traveling on to the next espresso stand.

Something in the curve of my collar,
the cut of my blouse sets them running.

They know they are in the hands of a master.
But when the coffee's on, the pumpernickel

toasted just right, I have to let them know;
I'm actually ready to let them go."  p.87

In "Transcendence", she uses the musical phrase,
"plastic curtains ecstatic as castanets."  Words like that are mesmerizing, and I kept finding segments equally unique and beautiful, compiling an instant mental picture.

In some of the poems she discusses the genocide in Srebrenica, and at times she refers to a 'Sarajevo Rose'.  I had to look that up, and I've included a picture (above).  A Sarajevo Rose is the location of a mortal shell attack that killed some one, some person, some individual that meant more than just a mark on the pavement.  The damaged area is then filled with red wax, as a rememberance.  That strange mix of memory and horror with a tiny dash of shocking color is what too many have lived through, and in a lyrical way Rich manages to link her poems with that same emotional impact. 

Day Out of Days, Sam Shepard...a short story collection

Day Out of Days
I felt a sense of guilt as I started reading this collection of short stories by Sam Shepard. It seemed as if I was reading someone’s journal, their diary, with all their personal ramblings being exposed to me, a stranger. I got over that, and went on to really enjoy this collection that contains very short stories, snippets of conversations, memories, poems, observations, and random musings. Shepard writes in the voice of a distant loner, hardened by truth and reality but still seeking, looking for a kind of lost artifact or talisman.

Some of the poems have titles, but most are simple and unadorned. Without the title (and sometimes without punctuation) you are left to figure out the point, and each reader could likely come away with a different impression.

Horses racing men
Mummies on the mend
What’s all this gauze bandaging
Unraveled down the stairs
Has come apart
In here
Something without end (p. 126)

In “Rosebud, South Dakota (Highway 83 North)” he describes a deceptively simple scene:

Lakota church, “Open to Anyone”, it says, but no one’s here. Not a single sorry soul. And it’s the Sabbath too. Imagine that. Sunday abandoned. Just constant wind ripping across the tattered yards and buried fences. Constant endless prairie breath. Like it’s always been. Now and evermore. Unrelenting. Raw. And could care less about the state of the Union.

Shepard’s subjects are dry, tired, lost, searching, guilty, sarcastic, sardonic, and grim. They inhabit truck stops, rest stops, desert paths and windy valleys. Remarkably, reading these doesn’t feel depressing or dispiriting. Instead, it’s almost like putting a story behind that stranger you noticed outside the diner’s plate glass window, or hitchhiking outside of town, or passing you on the open rural road in that old dirty Ford pickup.

Special thanks to Lauren Helman at Knopf for this Advanced Reading Copy.